


On an Empty Shore

by gypsydancergirl (hauntedlittledoll)



Series: 12/21 [2]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Random Literary References for the Win
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-09 16:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedlittledoll/pseuds/gypsydancergirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian always runs from the past, but the past has a way of chasing after him.  Maybe someday, Damian will let it catch up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_“When we have found all the meanings and lost all the mysteries, we will be alone, on an empty shore.”_

  
_-Tom Stoppard;_ Arcadia

* * *

His apartment had been vandalized several times over. Jason kicked some of the trash aside and pulled up the badly tacked-down carpeting. There was a pressure switch just to the left of the knotted hardwood and a slice of flooring promptly retracted. The biometric scanner still worked somehow. Jason’s prints get him into the secret closet behind the bookshelf.

As he had once told Sasha, the only acceptable selfish use of billionaire funding is to add cliché secret rooms and passages behind every bookshelf.

It looked like his former sidekick remembered that little detail, and Jason was curious as to how she managed to get past the Batman, Inc. security. Scarlet had her ways, he supposed ruefully as he surveyed the closet. His armory had been cleaned out, and lipstick stained his spare helmet—not in the sweet-if-potentially-awkward evidence of a thoughtful kiss for a lost mentor, but rather all over the helmet in crude graffiti.

“Jackass” was written boldly across the forehead, with heavy rouge spots for the cheeks and a few anatomical sketches across the back that were rather good for having been drawn in lipstick on a rounded surface. From its pedestal, the mask stared back solemnly at Jason over the villainous cartoon mustache that had been applied.

Sasha had always been like the kid sister that Jason never had. He wondered if she was still out there after two years on her own; he’d have to ask Barbara if he ever went back to the Cave.

That wouldn’t be happening anytime soon. Forced convalescing over the last week had left Jason with a distinct distaste for the Cave, Bruce’s suffocating guilt, and Talia’s demanding presence. If he didn’t have such a healthy fear of Alfred, Jason would have made like Tiny Tim and bolted the second he could feel his legs under him.

Probably straight into a stalagmite or the giant penny, but it was the principle of the thing.

The shakes that came with withdrawal didn’t make it any easier to take command of his body again after two years as a glorified puppet. Remembering that he could reach up and sweep his hair out of his eyes or scratch his nose was the hardest part. Remembering was the ticket as the shakes wore off and his limbs stopped reacting with intent to self-maim at the slightest step.

Jason had a lot of respect for his replacement making it out of the Cave without tipping anyone off inside of two hours. They hadn’t heard from Tim since—good for the Pretender.

Jason had to sit, puke, and seize until the world righted itself while Talia al Ghul watched apathetically. He hadn’t even gotten the privilege of the almighty slap that Stephanie had delivered upon making her first meaningful steps across the Cave.

Jason wondered how long the Robins’ carte blanche would last before the big bad Bat put his foot down. It was a passive-aggressive move on Bruce’s part to leave Talia’s punishment in the hands of her victims, but he was in theory protecting the woman from her Father as they searched for the little runaways. Sooner or later, Batman would lose all patience.

Jason had run out long ago.

There were a few quick notes emanating from Jason’s coat pocket—a birdcall on repeat—which Jason couldn’t explain. He’d only been back a week, and never got around to replacing his cell phone let alone giving that number out.

It was a nice phone at least, high-tech and with a decent-sized keypad. According to the contact information, “Robbie” is on the line. Jason put the call on speakerphone as he flipped through some of the functions. His address book also has numbers for “Alvin” and “Constance.”

“These toys your idea, Dick?” he asked, cutting off any attempt at polite conversation.

“Um, pretty sure it was Tim. We found ours under our pillows.”

“Cute trick with the aliases … has he got me under “Miles” or “Rojo?” Jason began messing with the camera settings.

“My contacts are listed under various birds, and Steph’s are Disney characters. You’re Blue Jay and Aladdin, if you’re still curious.”

“Not sure if I should be offended or impressed,” Jason returned, shuffling through two years of spam in his e-mail. “Was all the sass a pre-puppet thing or is this the baby bird’s way of dealing?”

“It’s a Tim thing,” Dick answered, sounding pained. Jason wasn’t known for pulling punches; Dick should be used to it by now. “Look, Jay …”

“I appreciate the Robin-line, Dick. I do, and who knows … maybe I’ll use it from time to time,” Jason shrugged generously. Probably only when drunk and/or in need of bail money, but he would set the ICE info so that if he gets in over his head, the others will be notified. That was almost team-friendly. “But …”

“Tim left us a text, Jason. He said not to contact him.” Jason had spotted that little detail too. “He gave us the means to do so and asked us not to.”

“So either listen to the pretender or don’t, Goldie. It’s not my problem.” Jason meant that; Bats were crazy and the headgames never stopped. Jason might be a Bat, might fulfill that crazy requirement, but the world was a whole lot simpler outside the Cave.

“How the heck is the no-kill rule not your _very_ personal problem, Jason Peter Todd?” Dick snapped. “Ra’s made him kill again, and Tim needs us right now. You think Bruce is going to _understand_? Did he _understand_ you?”

“Did you?” Jason hissed back. “If Tim wants us, he knows where to find us. You ever think that might be the reason he gave us the dang phones?”

There was a long moment of silence. Then Dick swallowed. “Tim ran away, and he doesn’t always come back whole when he does that, Jay. He’s gone, and I don’t even know how to talk to Bruce with Talia … just with everything-Talia. And Damian’s out there somewhere with the Demon’s Head and an extremely dangerous child.”

Jason snorted. “Says the man who turned the last assassin baby into a human being.”

“What if Ra’s is playing with him like Talia says? What if his clone decides he’d rather be with Talia than Damian?”

“I think Damian is the last person to underestimate a baby al Ghul, Dickie-bird,” Jason returned matter-of-factly. “And Talia is about as reliable as Ra’s al Ghul himself. If the kid is running, I say let him run. It’s the first sane choice he’s made, and it’s the only attempt at self-preservation this family has ever seen.”

“He’s fourteen years old!”

“So was I,” Jason delivered bluntly.

_Fourteen and Robin. Fourteen and angry. Fourteen and soon to be fired._

_Barely fifteen and dead._

“That doesn’t have to be Damian,” Dick choked out. “I can’t let that be Damian. I can’t fail again. Steph and I are heading out tonight. We’re going to try to beat Bruce to the boys, and …”

“And what? Go on an adventure, hopping countries or the multiverse until Bats gets bored and stops looking? Bruce is pissed, Dick, and he’s got good reasons.”

“You don’t believe Damian knew what he was doing, Jason.”

“No, I don’t. And if it makes you feel better, I doubt Tim does either. Talia’s a broken record, and even Bruce knows that … but he’s not going to get the full story until he finds Damian. So that’s the new mission. ‘The mission is what matters.’ You can’t just hide the kid away until everything cools down, Dick. Not this time. Whole world has changed; you’d be better off re-learning how to live in it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Then it’s your funeral. I am _done_ with everything al Ghul.” If Jason said it enough times, maybe it would come true. Even villains could have a dream.

“You’re not going to help us?” Dick demanded, the hurt in his voice palpable.

Jason grimaced dragging a hand down his face tiredly and leaned back against the wall of his neglected apartment. “Do what? If the baby bats don’t want to be found, they won’t be.”

“We have to try! Damian doesn’t even know we survived!”

“And how do you think he’s going to take it, Dick?” Jason growled. “Hey, kiddo, we were awake the whole damn time. Saw everything. Heard everything. The communal showers kinda sucked, but hey! As soon as you gave up on us, everything turned out okay.”

Dick made a broken noise in the back of his throat. Jason shifted the phone to his other hand and waited for the inevitable scolding filled with hope. Something about it not being Damian’s fault and the importance of trying …

“Jay,” Dick choked out finally, “you can be a real ass.”

Not exactly what the Red Hood had been expecting; Jason shoved the guilt down deep. “Look, if you and Blondie find the kid you can tell him that I said thanks. Or that I’m fucking sorry. I don’t know—whatever you think the situation calls for.”

“Jason …”

“Yeah, whatever, Dickie-bird,” Jason muttered, ending the call and tossing his phone in the general direction of the bed. It sent up a thick cloud of dust. Jason tried to remember the last time he changed the sheets before Talia’s little game. Then he exhaled slowly and reached for his defaced helmet.

Only to swear when he dislodged the mouse that had apparently taken to nesting inside it.


	2. Chapter 2

The mark burned across Damian’s back, curling smartly over his shoulder and teasing the soft flesh of the throat.  He had not fought an opponent who used the whip with such skill since Gotham.

He gingerly brushed the laceration with his fingertips where it neatly bisected the bite scar from his last night in Talia’s domain.  The man-bat had left its messy mark upon the heir of al Ghul a little over a year ago, but the whip had cut through scar tissue just as easily as the unmarked skin.

One more for the collection then.

Damian refused medical treatment as he always did when conscious and carefully slid a clean shirt around his shoulders.  His fingers followed the tiny buttons half-way before giving up, and Damian toed off his shoes immediately upon entering the upper levels of the house.

He liked the feel of polished stone under his feet.

Damian walked softly through the hallways.  Their quarters were on the east side of the house, adjacent to the inner courtyard, and unless Benjamin had succeeded in persuading his caretaker to take one last jaunt outside … Damian could find his little brother safely in bed not six feet from Damian’s own couch.

Lia was sitting in the living space that she shared with the brothers, drawing quietly as a radio softly played love songs in the background.  She smiled up at Damian when she caught on to his presence, and raised a quiet finger to her lips—Benjamin was sleeping then.

He had made one request of Ra’s al Ghul upon returning to his grandfather’s side.  He wanted a caretaker for Benjamin that had no connection to the League of Assassins or any other organization his family had a hand in.  In fact, Damian wanted someone with no connections at all, someone who couldn’t be threatened or bribed or frightened.  With Benjamin in his arms, Damian had challenged Ra’s:  “Find me someone with nothing.”

Within four days, they had Lia.  Lia, a young woman in her twenties that had been so badly scarred by a childhood accident that her parents considered her unmarriageable, had lost her parents and younger brother in a car bombing as an adult.  The same bombing had left her elder brother with scars ironically similar to Lia’s own; the man had committed suicide.  Her sheltered childhood had left her with only the most basic of schooling, and neither of her married sisters would take her in.

Ra’s personally plucked her from the streets for one purpose.

She spoke no English when she arrived, but had told Damian in halting French of the man’s careless offer.  That Ra’s candidly admitted he was what some would call a very bad man, but he had a cause that he believed in and adorable grandchildren.  Wouldn’t the young lady like to live a life in comfort while caring for them?

His grandfather merely acknowledged an interest in Lia’s amusing chalk pictures when asked for his side of the story.  So Damian accepted Lia and introduced her to Benjamin in this very room.

He had impressed upon his younger brother that Lia was Benjamin’s responsibility, and the four year old had a duty to protect her throughout their travels.  Damian would not have a repeat of the history tutor incident.

Not that Benjamin was studying history or any of his other subjects under Talia’s orders.  Children his age were still sorting out letters and words in most of the western world, and Benjamin had been studying history, politics, language, literature and mathematics.  Damian commissioned Lia to give a few simple lessons every day to keep Benjamin from losing his easy literacy, but left suitable hours for the child to play with his animals and friends alike.

Benjamin’s other training had virtually ceased unless Damian was in the mood to teach his younger brother something from his past.  The little boy was already capable of lethal measures if not actively using them, and should any attempt an assassination in the house of the Demon’s Head … well, Damian had not been nearly so lax with Lia’s training.

Those delicate perfect hands could now wield a gun or knife as easily as that stick of chalk.

“Have you eaten, Dami?”  Lia moved to put her things away, but Damian shook his head.  He didn’t care how badly burned her face was; to him, she was beautiful.  “You should eat more,” she scolded gently.  “I will find meat for breakfast, and you will eat it if you know what is good for you.”

Damian smiled.  There would be meat on the table in the morning, but also fruit for his vegetarian diet.  “If I knew,” he acknowledged quietly.  “Fortunately, I have you to tell me.”

“The boy has wit enough to sass, he has wit enough to answer his little brother’s questions,” Lia returned smartly.  “All day, he has been asking me: “When will Dami be home?”  And all day, I tell him: “Soon, precious.”  Does he believe me?  No.”

Damian frowned.  “I told him that I would return by Tuesday.”

Lia sighed, and reached over to lay her hand over Damian’s own.  “Dami, it is Thursday.  Why do you think your grandfather came looking for you?”  She pulled him in to seal a quick kiss to his forehead.  “Get some rest, mon petit ange.  Morning will come soon, and Benji will wear you out all over again.”

“Oui,” Damian responded tiredly.  “Goodnight, Lia.”

“Sleep well,” she bid him, settling back amongst the cushions with her work as a man crooned over the radio in her native language.  “Dream sweet.”

Damian didn’t bother correcting her, content with the decree as she had uttered it.  He let himself into the room that he shared with Benjamin—there were two others attached to their sitting room as well as Lia’s, but Damian preferred to keep his brother close.

The younger boy didn’t stir from his bed.  Benjamin slept on his back, knees drawn up and one arm thrown carelessly over his head.  His other arm curled around a stuffed bear that Damian had purchased in Germany nine months ago, and gripped the blanket close to his chin.  One small foot hung over the edge uncovered, and Damian tugged the blanket over it automatically as he passed.

Damian crouched to place a kiss on Benjamin’s forehead as he did every night upon tucking his little brother in.  He had made a decision, and he would honour it by being the best brother that he could possibly be.  Then he patted the stuffed animal once because ritual was ritual, and moved to change his clothing in preparation for bed.

He had not been asleep long before his mattress shifted under a child’s weight.  It was still dark outside Damian’s window as he waited for his younger brother to make himself comfortable.  Finally, Benjamin settled heavily on the older boy’s stomach and poked Damian’s cheek experimentally.

“Brother, are you alive?”

Damian snorted and made a mock attempt at biting the offending digit.  Benjamin withdrew hastily before leaning close enough to brush noses with his older brother.  “I was asleep,” Damian grumbled, wrapping an arm around the boy’s waist.  “Now I am awake.  Who is to blame, I wonder?”

“You were late,” Benjamin whispered, rolling into Damian’s grip and twisting small fingers into the hair at the nape of Damian’s neck.  It was getting a little long; Damian needed a haircut soon.  “I thought you might have decided not to come back.”

Damian sighed, and turned on his side in order to wrap Benjamin in both arms.  “You are my little brother,” he murmured into the boy’s hair.  “I will never let anything happen to you.  As long as there is breath in my body, I will come back for you.”

“What if you die?”

“Then I will return as a powerful djinn to protect you and Lia,” Damian lied.  “If you think they fear me now, imagine what they will say about the Son of the Demon when he can slip into their safe houses through cracks and stand immune like air itself to their fancy weapons.”

“Some djinn are very small,” Benjamin mused doubtfully.

Damian tweaked a lock of hair almost as long as his own—Benjamin was in dire need of a haircut too.  “And some djinn are very mean,” he returned.  “But the only ones worth fearing …”

“… are the sneaky ones,” Benjamin finished for him.  “You would be a very sneaky djinn, Brother.”

Damian hummed an agreement.  “I would be sneaky and mean.  And maybe small—small can be very useful, you know.”

“Do you promise, Dami?”

“I promise.  Now go to sleep, ahki.”

Benjamin was quiet for a moment before wiggling free of Damian’s grasp and sitting upright.  “You forgot to kiss me goodnight, Damian,” he accused, as accustomed to the ritual as Damian after a year.

Damian fought the urge to smirk.  “I did not,” he refuted with mock indignation.  “I kissed you while you were sleeping.”

“Then I should get a second one,” Benjamin argued, “while I’m awake.”

“Two kisses?” Damian muttered, “Plus the ones that you surely received from Lia?  You will end up spoiled indeed.”  But he brushed the kiss across Benjamin’s temple anyway.  These were the things older brothers do.

* * *

Birdsong erupted inches from Dick Grayson’s ear.  He fumbled for a moment, but someone else’s cellular flew at him before he could recover his own.

“I am not taking coordinates before breakfast,” his roommate announced.  Dick made sound approximating spoken acknowledgement and rolled out of bed.  The blonde had disappeared under the pillows of the other queen-sized bed, and that was his cue to provide waffles ASAP.

The clock says 3 AM, but time is relative to world-traveling Bats.

Coffee first.

Dick fumbled with the settings of the machine provided by the hotel room, and wandered up to the global map that he’d pinned up in every hotel/apartment that came and went over the last year.  Studying it for a moment, he picked out the coordinates from the text and tapped the map in thought.  When he had coffee, the former hero flipped through the contact list for “Bernard.”

“Timmy, remember that conversation we had about using your words?”

He could hear his younger brother roll his eyes from across the Atlantic Ocean.  Dick leaned against the counter and savored his coffee.

“All I’m saying is that if you want us in the Middle East, a “please” would have been nice,” Dick chided gently.  “Manners are still a thing over in England, right?”

“Depends on the company,” Tim returned.  “ _Please_ head to Egypt.  There’s a private jet waiting for you at the airport, and you have a room booked at Shepheards.”

“Bird sighting?” Dick asked quietly.

“Last spotted in Lisbon,” Tim answered quietly.  “I have a confirmed body, and confirmed injury.  My contact saw him picked up by the League.”

“That’s not good,” Dick swallowed.

“On the contrary, we know that Damian’s returned to Ra’s for at least a day or so.  He never leaves without first spending time with Benjamin.  We also know that Ra’s is currently housed in Alexandria.”

“So why are you sending us to Cairo?”

“Because I’m sending Talia to Alexandria, and sur-”

“You’re doing _what_?!” Dick demanded so sharply, that Stephanie started out of bed.  He waved the blonde off, and got a raised eyebrow for his troubles.  Dick left his coffee on the counter and flopped over the end of her bed, pressing speakerphone.  “You’re on speaker, Tim.  Now explain.”

“Every time Talia gets close, Damian takes Benjamin and rabbits,” Tim obeyed with false-humor. “I have a breakfast date with Talia in exactly one hour. She’ll get Ra’s location out of me, and given the number of double agents folded into both Leviathan and the League of Assassins, Ra’s will know in plenty of time for Damian to book it. His nearest safe-house is in Cairo; the two of you will need to head him off.”

Dick stared at the phone, trying to process Tim on only half a cup of coffee.  Stephanie found words before he did.

“I’m sorry,” Steph began pleasantly. “But did you just say that you were siccing _Talia al Ghul_ on Damian?”

“I’m not—”

“You are having breakfast with a woman who gives new meaning to “Mommy Dearest” and sending her after what she wants most.”  Steph blew her bangs out of her face with an exaggerated huff, and Dick tucked a stray lock of blonde hair behind her ear.  He left it at that though; Steph could be touchy about her hair.  “Nevermind the fact that we’ve been trying really hard to keep said-target out of her hands for over a _year_ ,” Steph continued.  Then she frowned.  “How do you even know where Ra’s al Ghul is?”

That was a very good question.  Dick offered a fist bump that Steph returned without even glancing his way.  The hesitation on the other end of the line didn’t bode well.  Tim was barely on speaking terms with his fellow Robins.  Contact with Bruce was dicey on a good day, and Ra’s was just as responsible as Talia for Tim’s current state of mind.

“Timmy,” Dick tried to ask gently, “are you working with Ra’s again?”

“I wasn’t working with him the first time,” Tim bit off. “I’m not letting Talia get ahold of Damian or Benjamin. I’m not letting Ra’s kill Talia. I’m just getting shit done.”

Hearing Jason’s language pop out of Tim’s mouth was never going to be normal, but if the only former Robin permanently residing in Gotham could help Tim, then Dick will hold off on the swear jar.  The Tim that had come back from Leviathan wasn’t the Tim that had been captured.

“I have this worked out, Dick. I’ll handle Ra’s and Talia. Just … just go to Cairo and stop Damian, okay? I’m giving you a headstart.”

“It’s not much of one,” Stephanie shot back. “And Batman will be right behind Talia.”

“I have faith in your ability to evade debriefing,” Tim snorted.

That was a dig at Steph.

Dick had refused to pick up where he left off with the cape and pointy ears—not without Damian.  He couldn’t be Batman until his Robin had come home again.  At the same time, Nightwing didn’t have the freedom to disappear and ignore all communication from the Justice League _or_ the Bat Cave.  So Dick became something of a ghost in the machine.  Unless Oracle took it upon herself to track him down, the only way to reach Dick Grayson was on the Robin-line.

Steph didn’t have that option.  They needed a link to Batman, Inc.  They needed an excuse for their trip-without-end.  So Stephanie donned the Batgirl uniform once more.  She was their public face, and Bruce’s scapegoat.

But the blonde never complained.

“Tim,” Dick started to censure because Steph didn’t deserve that.  He didn’t get any further than that disappointed use of his little brother’s name before Steph hit the ‘disconnect call’ button.  Dick shifted, and Steph rolled over to lay her head against his shoulder for a moment.

He’d gotten the chat with Stephanie that he’d promised himself … a few dozen times over.  More than one night had been spent with ice cream and bad movies between leads.  A fair few had been spent dispersing justice and working out their many problems with fists.

Damian was missing.  Jason refused to leave Gotham.  Tim refused to come back.

Steph and Dick had become the go-betweens.

It was a thankless job, but Dick couldn’t see himself doing anything else.  To be honest, he couldn’t see Stephanie doing anything else either.

Gotham wasn’t the same without all the Robins on her streets.  Family and friends had moved on without them, and finding their pace never quite worked when they were always a step behind.  Dick kept promising himself that when they had Damian back, it would be time to go home and rebuild.

With Tim’s plan, Dick supposed it was time to find out if he could keep that promise.

He wasn’t naive.  It wouldn’t be the same as before, but it would be a familiar presence in the passenger seat and Batgirl’s chatter on the comm.  It wouldn’t be the same, but the Red Hood would be on the ground, and Red Robin would be high above them.

It was a pretty nice fantasy.

Dick left it at that, stroked Steph’s hair, squeezed her shoulder, and rolled out of bed to get dressed and packed.  They had a jet to catch and a baby brother to find.

In lieu of waffles, Dick let Steph finish off the coffee.

* * *

Lia woke them in the morning as always with a gentle rap on the door.  If Damian wasn’t home, she would enter and coach Benjamin through his routine as the little boy hated getting up.  When Damian was home, dressing Benjamin was his responsibility.

The pain in Damian’s back sharpened as he rolled over, but the teenager ignored the twinge and gave the younger boy a sharp shove from the bed.  Benjamin landed in a heap on the floor taking all the blankets with him.  It took a moment, but then sharp baby blue eyes peered over the edge of the low bed with the promise of vengeance.  Damian smirked sleepily, issuing a challenge as he took back custody of his bedding and inadvertently began a tug of war match.

He reconsidered when Benjamin’s eyes narrowed suddenly, but it was too late.  His little brother abruptly released the blankets, temporarily burying Damian in the spoils of victory in order to shout: “Lia!  Brother is bleeding all over the sheets again!”

Damian yanked the covers off his face, seeing the dark streaks of dried blood that had tipped off his little brother and cursing as Lia invaded.

“Dami!” she scolded, pushing him flat amongst the pillows with a firm hand to the small of his back.  “What have you done this time?  I tell you over and over—if you are hurt, you go to the doctors or you come to me.  What a bad example you set for Benji like this!”

The little brat had taken the opportunity to curl up on the floor in a nest of stolen blankets—completely unconcerned by either the bloodstains or Damian’s scowl—but his voice emanated from within the folds regardless.  “Brother is a bad example,” Benjamin parroted sweetly like the little traitor he was.

“It is nothing,” Damian argued as she peeled his shirt back carefully.  “She only got one lash in, and it was at a terrible angle too.”  The mark curled from just below the ribs on one side of his back to over his shoulder and around his throat.  It was an ineffective hit to be sure, but that she had managed to tag him at all and from ground level too was just embarrassing.  “It is just the one welt, Lia.”

“One welt or twenty makes no difference.  Infection scorns foolish pride,” she snapped. “Go.  Wash.  I will tend when you are finished.”  The woman finally released him, and swooped down on Benjamin.  “Come, mon petit démon, it is time for your breakfast.”  Taking the boy, blankets and all, into her arms, Lia bore the younger away still cooing to her charge.

Damian still found it a little bit funny that despite their names, it was the innocent Benjamin that Lia called her little demon while Damian, the assassin, was “mon petit ange” when in Lia’s good graces—something that Damian would have to earn back now.

Peeling back the shirt a second time, Damian let first cold water run over the open skin to ease the sting before turning his shower hot.  The cut had opened in the night ruining another shirt, but it didn’t deserve the fuss that Lia would make.

Morning ablutions finished, Damian joined the others in the sitting area.  Lia had his clean shirt off again before he could even reach for his breakfast, muttering dire predictions under her breath in her own language as she liberally applied disinfectant.  Damian buried the curse word he itched to use in the melon from his meal.

Across the table, Benjamin regarded him quietly over a biscuit.

Although Damian’s torso is a map of scarring from the last year in his grandfather’s service, Benjamin’s focus was almost always on the bite.  Damian had never been certain what Benjamin remembered from that awful night and what had been dismissed as nightmares or even repressed entirely if Damian was lucky.  A small part of the teenager was afraid to ask, so they continued ever onward.

“So careless,” Lia murmured, smoothing gauze over the lacerated skin.

“Brother is the heir of the Demon’s Head, Lia,” Benjamin lectured idly as he tore apart his biscuit.  “He has many enemies, but Damian isn’t afraid.  He is the Son of the Demon.”

“The Son of the Demon could be a little more careful and save his friends the worry,” Lia retorted, leaning across the table to plant a kiss on the little boy’s head.  “And you, you will stop tormenting the guards so that I don’t have to worry for you either, mon petit demon.”

Benjamin flushed guiltily, but before Damian could pursue the line of questioning left open to him, the teenager was silenced by a face full of fabric.

“Put on your shirt, Dami, and finish your breakfast.  Then you will dress Benji.  Choose nice clothes; he will be going with you.”

“Grandfather wants to see both of us,” Benjamin nodded, taking Lia’s proffered distraction promptly.  “Perhaps I will go with you on your mission,” he suggested brightly.  “We could fight together, and I would not allow you to get hurt.”

Damian swallowed and took a sip of water.  “Then who shall protect Lia?” he teased, not mentioning that his brother would only attend one of Damian’s assassinations over his older brother’s dead body.  “I need you here to guard our home,” he urged lightly, mimicking another’s suggestion from a hallowed memory.  Grayson had often diverted him with such nonsense …

… and just like that, Damian’s appetite was gone.

He pushed away his plate, and held out a hand to Benjamin who looked torn between pride and suspicion.  After a split second standoff, Benjamin shook his head and held out his arms to be carried instead.

Damian indulged his little brother.

“Grandfather never asks to see me,” Benjamin confided quietly as Damian knelt to button the younger boy’s shirt.  “He sends me things, but he doesn’t come to see me.  Lia and I never go up to his apartments or down to the lower levels.”

“We went at Christmas and for our birthdays,” Damian countered, holding out Benjamin’s vest.  “Grandfather is busy,” he tried, using the boy’s own logic and words against him.  “He is the Demon’s Head, and he must run the League.”

Benjamin’s eyes stayed troubled, and he held out his arms to be carried once more.

Damian carried him all the way up to the corridor of Ra’s al Ghul’s private office.  Then he set his younger brother down and crouched as if to straighten Benjamin’s clothing.

He caught Benjamin’s chin in one hand, and studied the pale blue eyes before him.  “We are strong, we are clever, and we are together,” Damian reminded Benjamin.  “We are al Ghul and Wayne.”

“But we are more than the Bat and more than the Demon,” Benjamin cheered up a little at the altered mantra.  The words that Talia had drilled into their childhoods were easily twisted to Damian’s purpose.  “We are the future.”

Damian nodded, stood, and allowed them into the office.

“Good morning, Damian,” Ra’s greeted without looking up from his desk.  Omniscience was a favored character trait amongst their family.  “Congratulations on your success in Lisbon.”

“Tt,” Damian uttered shortly, crossing his arms.  To his amusement, Benjamin mimicked the pose.  “Was that supposed to be difficult, Grandfather?”

“There are poorer pockets amongst the League this morning,” his grandfather acknowledged the supposedly-secret betting pool graciously.  The assorted generals of the Demon’s Head would exercise more care in betting against the Son of the Demon if they knew Ra’s an active participant in the pool.  “To which charity should I direct your winnings this time, Grandson?”

“The usual will do,” Damian shrugged, letting the teasing roll off his back.  “You wished to see us?”

“I know that you have only just gotten in, Grandson,” Ra’s apologized carelessly, “but I have a time-sensitive assignment for you.”

“The target?” Damian asked quietly.

“A former protégé,” Ra’s shook his head sadly, as he passed a slim file to Damian.  “At one time, he held great promise, but it would appear that the young man has forgotten how to play the Game.”

The sparse nature of the file seemed to belie that belief.  No photographs available, just a brief description of appearance in his Grandfather’s hand.  A penchant for the bo staff noted, and a London address.

“This falls under the jurisdiction of Batman, Inc.” Damian countered, moving to hand back the file.  He had an agreement in place with Ra’s regarding the company run by his father; Damian performed the errands of the Demon’s Head so long as Batman, Inc. remained uninvolved.

Damian had no desire to revisit the past.

“A rather well-thought out measure to avoid my retribution,” Ra’s admitted candidly, refusing the file.  “But I have taken pains to ensure the agent in question will be otherwise occupied for the evening, and this breach of conduct requires swift and decisive action.”

Damian considered a moment; the local agent should be easy enough to work around.  He had done it before as a child.  “Very well.”

Benjamin had been very quiet up until this point, but no one could suppress the little boy’s willpower for long.  Benjamin _hated_ to be ignored.  “Grandfather, what about me?”

Damian barely resisted the urge to step in front of the little boy when Ra’s turned to his younger grandson with a satisfied smile.  “Why … you will go with your brother of course.  It will be like a vacation for you all.”

“Absolutely not,” Damian snapped, collaring his younger brother before Benjamin could further entrench himself in the schemes of the Demon’s Head.

His grandfather continued pleasantly as if he hadn’t heard Damian: “Lia will go with you of course to look after Benjamin while you are on business, but then you should have plenty of time to take in some of the sights.  Perhaps a trip to Kent would be permissible; Benjamin has never seen your childhood home after all, Damian.”

Damian’s childhood home had burned to the ground when he was scarcely eight years old, and what few structures remained on the property were League safe houses.  The teenager was at a loss for this sudden venture, and searched his grandfather’s countenance for some kind of understanding.  What was the old man thinking?

Ra’s sighed in exaggerated disappointment.  “It would be best to have small persons out from under foot while I entertain, Grandson.  Surely, you could do your old grandfather this favor and take your brother to England for a day or two.”

“Entertain,” Damian echoed numbly, his voice betraying him.

“One of my daughters has decided to pay me a visit,” his grandfather inclined his head gently as he continued unnecessarily.  Damian _understood_ —Benjamin shouldn’t have to.  “… and I mean to show her all the hospitality of the League.”

“Mother?”  Benjamin reached out for a handful of Damian’s shirt, but neither Damian nor Ra’s heard the question.  “Mother is coming?”

“Tt,” Damian managed, “I suppose it is rather neglectful on my part that Benjamin has never seen the British museum.”

Benjamin tugged harder on Damian’s shirt.  “I don’t want to see the British museum.”

“Everyone should see the British museum,” Damian returned in a tone that he _knew_ was too sharp.  Benjamin curbed his tongue, but shot a resentful look at his elder brother as he ran from the office.

Damian barely managed the requisite pleasantries before following his little brother’s lead.

* * *

Ra’s watched his grandsons in the courtyard below with pride until a firm knock on the door roused him from the bemused memories.

“Enter.”

The young man raised an eyebrow as he moved to join Ra’s at the window.  “You’ve given Damian his assignment then, sir?”  Without waiting for a response, the newcomer began paging through the documents on the desk.  “Odds are 50/50 on this one, Ra’s al Ghul.”

Ra’s shrugged, watching as Damian lost patience and threw his younger brother over one shoulder to return to their rooms.  He had already sent word to have their things packed.

“Just this once,” the Demon’s Head mused, “I don’t believe I will place any money on Damian.”

This startled the younger man.  “You never bet against your grandson.”

Ra’s tilted his head, sparing a half-smile for his closest ally.  “I never said I would bet on his opponent.”  He laughed lightly to reassure the younger man; for once in Ra’s al Ghul’s long existence, he could afford to be kind.

There must always be a White Ghost.


	3. Chapter 3

“So do we have anything that resembles a plan?” the blonde asked pleasantly, hooking her ankles neatly as she perched on the balcony railing against all advisement.  They were incognito—hapless American tourists, a faction that didn’t belong, but didn’t stand out either—because the last thing they needed was for whispers of Batgirl to get around.  “Not that staking out Li’l D’s safe-house isn’t a solid step in the right direction …”

“… but it would be nice to have insurance against the kid spotting us and bolting?” Dick finished wearily, surveying their surroundings under the cautious guise of the nosy tourist.  His camera was for show, and he half-turned to capture his companion in the afternoon light.

Steph smiled sweetly.  “Bingo.”

Dick wordlessly leaned against the railing next to her, turning his back on the unassuming property across the street.  Steph twined her fingers with his, but never took her eyes off the prize.  The miniature camera in her sunglasses was twice as powerful as Dick’s expensive toy, and no longer linked to any of the official Bat-feeds.

Call it a few years’ worth of missed birthday presents from Oracle.

Stephanie had a valid concern.  Cass had stumbled upon Damian in Australia last January, but lost him again when the younger boy recognized her across a busy restaurant.  It had frustrated the taciturn heroine, and Black Bat had been somewhat unnecessarily rough on Damian’s replacement assassins in retaliation.

Adding insult to injury, the Son of the Demon eventually caught up with his fleeing target in Wales while the various bats and birds disputed jurisdiction over the Australian sighting.

Then again, Bruce’s concentrated efforts to pin Leviathan and his children had gone repeatedly astray no matter how well-planned or well-executed the retrieval missions happened to be.  Some mixture of shame, anger, and duty made the Batman determined to solve the case on his own—allies, friends, and family, be damned.

Dick couldn’t really reach his mentor anymore.

“No plan,” he finally answered Steph.  “A Flying Grayson lives life without a net.”

If an acrobat couldn’t trust his catcher’s grip, there wouldn’t be a show.

Dick was grateful for the presence of his quasi-sister at his side.  Tim and Jason were out there too—united in the mission of keeping their youngest (absent) member safe even if the pair was divided on the best way to go about it.

Dick will call Jason in the morning if everything worked out … and maybe even if it didn’t.  The Red Hood had an unusual talent for putting the best and the worst moments of their lives into proper perspective.

Today would undoubtedly need perspective.

Tomorrow.

Steph exhaled noisily, drumming the fingers of her free hand on the railing as she frowned at the empty building across the way.  “Just a little one?” she wheedled, tilting her sunglasses to keep the camera oriented while she swept the street with an experienced eye.

“You sit on Benjamin,” Dick teased back, “and I’ll do my best to hug Damian into submission.  Then we can all check out the pyramids after dinner.”

“Good plan,” Steph chuckled, sharing a fist-bump.  Dick laughed quietly and looped an arm around his companion’s neck while other tourists looked on approvingly.

Let the civilians see what they want.  This was good.  No, this was perfect.  They had been chasing Damian for just over a year now, but this was the first time that they had ever been able to get ahead of the teenager, thanks to Tim.

They were _so close_.

* * *

The last minute flight to England was an irritable one.  Benjamin was in a mood and prepared to sulk indefinitely.  Damian felt stressed and kept a much tighter leash on Benjamin than normal.  The brothers fed off of each other’s distress, and Lia snapped at both of them indiscriminately.

She always hated leaving the compound, and the crowds of London would undoubtedly send her into hiding.  Given her own way, Lia would never leave the hotel room, and Damian would be forced to wrangle Benjamin single-handedly in public.  Their tour of the city and surrounding areas would be hasty indeed.

Benjamin twisted in his seat again, and Damian pinched the child’s newly-exposed side, neatly catching Benjamin’s furious backhand.  “Behave,” he warned in a whisper, “or I will put you to sleep until we reach the hotel.”

The threat finally instilled some decorum into Benjamin.  Upon squirming free of Damian’s grip, Benjamin curled up next to Lia, earning himself a story and a soft hand stroking his hair while both parties ignored Damian’s existence.

Damian preferred it that way; the Son of the Demon was Benjamin’s protector and boogeyman all in one.  Damian would rather his little brother never again come face-to-face with the actual monster.

With nothing else to do and a nap impossible, Damian worked the case in the only way he could.  He began sketching absently on the unused napkins.  Faces took shape in black ink—potential targets for his mission.  The vague description in the file bothered him: dark hair, blue eyes, compact frame, and average height, right-handed …

Even if the man had somehow wiped his image from the modern world—a feat that rather smacked of a certain computer hacker’s abilities and the involvement of Batman, Inc.—Grandfather was normally much more forthcoming with pertinent details.

 _Especially_ in writing.

Damian scowled, pressing harder with the pen as he considered the description again.  Such a brief note was unlike the Demon’s Head.  This mission was clearly a test.

Damian didn’t have time for tests.  The situation was bad enough as it was, and Damian did not have time to be running around London looking for his target without a clear idea of the man’s appearance.

“Who is that?”

Damian barely heard his little brother’s question as he stared down at Dick Grayson’s wide grin, Tim Drake’s clear annoyance and Jason Todd’s smirk—Todd didn’t even fit the damn description.

“Brother?”

Damian crumpled the napkin and cast it aside.  Benjamin would not recognize these faces—not animated, not alive, not for who they were before.  “No one.”

“Dami,” Lia cautioned, wrapping her arm around Benjamin once more.

“Mother would tell me,” Benjamin pulled away from his caretaker, leaning forward as his eyes flashed in challenge.

“Yes, she would,” Damian agreed, measuring his heart-rate and breathing to an acceptable standard.  He had played this game before, and would play it again until Benjamin was grown and could understand why Damian had removed them from Mother’s care.  “But I will not.”

Let Damian be the enemy.  Let him be the monster—the Son of the Demon—and let Talia al Ghul be a misunderstood ideal.  Mother would never get another opportunity to show Benjamin otherwise.

Benjamin’s tiny hands clenched into fists, but Damian’s earlier threat was still in effect.  His little brother turned away, burying his face in Lia’s side.

Damian refused to meet the woman’s gaze, and closed his eyes to feign sleep.

* * *

_Distract Batman._

Jason looked at the text, and sighed as he slowly stirred the cheese sauce into the macaroni—boxed, of course.  Alfred would be scandalized, but Jason had good memories of the mass-produced foodstuff.

Well, that and the fact that Jason’s foundlings had a less-than-refined palette.  Between the three of them, his kids could go through four boxes of mac ‘n’ cheese and still beg dessert off the Red Hood.  It was an ongoing battle to keep the fridge stocked, but what else could he do?

Teenage vigilantes needed fuel after all.

Jason considered the text once more, turned off the stove, and stuck his head out the door.  “Food’s on the stove!  Don’t forget the fucking greenery!”

With his sort-of familial obligations upheld, Jason retreated to the fire escape with a cigarette and the Robin-line, narrowly avoiding the small stampede.  He could keep an eye on the carnage from here, enjoy a quick smoke, and maybe even decide whether or not he was going to involve himself in Tim’s master plan.

Shit is obviously going down on the other side of the pond.  Twenty bucks said it was Damian-related, and the last year had done nothing to weaken the other birds’ devotion to finding the kid.

Jason was of two minds on the matter of their little brother.  On the one hand, Damian had successfully removed himself from Gotham, Batman, and his mother in one fell swoop.  Jason privately cheered the kid on, and had no major qualms with the kid’s new profession under Ra’s al Ghul.

Good for Damian.

On the other hand, there’s a fifteen year old kid running around the world and avoiding the few people actually on his side while keeping up with his grandfather’s hit-list and trying to raise a baby assassin.  That’s ambitious, even for Damian

Even the Red Hood itched sometimes to sweep the kid off to some illusion of safety—whether that was some kind of early admission to Oxford with Tim, or regular appearances on Dick and Steph’s version of _Where’s Waldo?_ or even in Jason’s overcrowded apartment with the rest of Gotham’s baby heroes—but safety doesn’t exist.  Not under Ra’s al Ghul and not in the Batcave.  No one could protect the little rugrats from everything … not even the Red Hood.

The kids were making him soft.

It was all Sasha’s fault.  Jason had invited her to move back in as soon as he found her, and of course she’d turned up at his door with two more hopeless cases.

It wasn’t like Jason could turn the homeless meta away, and … well, the Red Hood figured three kids couldn’t be any worse than two.

Sometimes Nell even went home which was more than he could say for the others.  One sassy redhead took the biggest bedroom and the tiny redhead just claimed a corner of the living room despite Jason’s protests.  After the third couch died under the stress of nightmare-induced transformations, he stopped trying to make the kid sleep on it and stocked up on air mattresses.

They were all making him soft.

Jason sighed and leaned back inside just long enough to shout “Eat the spinach!” at his minions.  At least, that’s what Dick and Steph called the trio; Jason had a sinking suspicion that he was more den mother than general.  These kids were saving a Robin-less Gotham long before the Red Hood made it home again.

He was going to end up finishing off the spinach himself, dang it.

Jason flipped open the Robin line—speed dial three for Robin Number Three—and waited.  There was a 50/50 chance that Tim would let it go to voicemail, and Jason wasn’t disappointed.

Baby Bird got bossy when Jason wasn’t looking, and now the Red Hood gets the pleasure of dealing long-distance with the younger vigilante’s time-sensitive information, suicidal plans, and occasional bouts of PTSD.

Karma could be a bitch when it caught up to you.

“You know, Replacement, _Distract Batman_ is kind of vague.  Distract him from what?  And what kind of distraction are we talking about here?  Crime, Catwoman, C4?”

Jason was somehow still on good terms with Selina.  He could probably manage all three if he put in the effort.  The only question was if Jason would let himself get entangled in the crazy … again.  It’s a good question.

His next dose of cutting wit was interrupted by the irritated beep of his phone.

New text:  _Big Distraction ASAP.  Have fun._

Now, Tim just wasn’t playing fair.

* * *

The suite would do for now.

Damian arranged for their meal while Lia was occupied with supervising Benjamin’s bath, and shooed off the attendant in favor of a few moments’ freedom to test the food.

It wasn’t often that either of them ate food that had not been prepared by Grandfather’s personal chef or Lia.  Damian indulged once in a while if missions allowed, but paranoia served the Son of the Demon well.

Once satisfied that the food was what it seemed, Damian retreated to the other room with his tablet.  Normally, he preferred to personally investigate his targets—ensure both the heinous nature of their crimes and the accuracy of his reports—but there was no time on this assignment.  Damian would handle it tonight, as quickly and quietly as possible, so that he could return to Benjamin and Lia promptly.

While Ra’s al Ghul seemed casually determined to end his daughter’s life, the Demon’s Head had not actually gotten around to doing so in the last year.  And even with Leviathan sorely weakened by Damian’s defection and the renewed League of Shadows … Talia al Ghul was a force to be reckoned with.

Mother knew how to play the game.  Should she sidestep Grandfather’s machinations, Benjamin would need Damian’s protection … no matter how little the younger boy seemed to care for it right now.

“What is it, Benjamin?”

The boy scowled.  “Lia sent me to fetch you for dinner.  I did not want to, but she said that I must.”

“I have already eaten,” Damian lied coolly without turning around and prodded a window of security footage aside.  Although the camera was located right across the street from the given address of his target, it was set in a completely useless angle.

“Liar,” Benjamin accused, settling small hands on his hips in an unconscious imitation of Lia.

_… of Stephanie Brown …_

Damian pushed the stray thought away with the useless tablet.  He would simply have to kill any male person on the premises after Hutchinson’s departure.  Desperate times called for desperate measures.

With that decided, Damian reached for the case that he had picked up from a local League resource on the way to the hotel.  “I am busy, Benjamin.  Go and eat your dinner.”

“I’m telling Lia.”

“Then go and do so,” Damian returned flippantly, withdrawing the elegant short blade and testing its weight.  Benjamin hovered in the doorway, clearly torn between his righteous sulk and the beautiful weapon in his older brother’s hands.  Damian resisted a small self-satisfied smirk at his victory, but it took considerable effort.

Within minutes, Lia found them both cross-legged on the bed, examining the set of elegant throwing knives in grudging accord.

“I expected as much,” the woman sighed mournfully, smoothly navigating around the foot of the bed to place the unwanted meal in Damian’s lap.  With a now-free hand, she palmed the blade Benjamin was polishing and presented him with his own plate.  “Eat, and you may have it back,” Lia teased, running a hand through Benjamin’s hair.

Damian rolled his eyes, and earned Lia’s attention in the process.

“You too, Dami.  If you are going out tonight, then you must eat properly first.”  Lia disappeared back into the sitting room momentarily before returning with her own dish.  “A hungry assassin’s stomach will betray him to his enemies—a most ignoble end for the Son of the Demon.”

Damian rolled his eyes.

Lia ignored him and took a seat on the bed as well, tapping the flat of the knife teasingly against Benjamin’s head before replacing it in the case.  “Missions tonight.  Haircuts tomorrow.”

“Fair enough,” Damian agreed, rearranging his plate.

“Are we going to the museum tomorrow too?” Benjamin murmured, frowning down at the plate in his lap.

Damian did not want to have this argument again.  “I do not wish to stay in the city.”  Not where any of Mother’s agents might spot them and summon the woman back.  “We shall set a day aside for it after our return from Kent.”

The brief meal gave way to sullen silence, and Damian gave quick consideration to the light outside.  He had ordered a light dinner as the change in time zones would wear more heavily on Benjamin and Lia while Damian kept his own (erratic) hours amidst his travels.  Ideally, Benjamin should fall asleep soon—early to bed, early to rise and disappear from the city—but there was no harm in speeding the process along.

“If you have finished your dinner, I believe there is sufficient time for a lesson,” Damian offered graciously, setting aside his own plate.  “Go and clear some space in the other room.”

Some basic tumbling should not incur too much property damage.

Lia took the empty plate thrust in her direction and watched Benjamin go—a little happier than before.  “He should not be here, Dami.”

“I can’t help it, Lia,” Damian protested quietly, mindful of the thin walls.  “Mother—”

“I understand,” she cut him off gently.  “I understand why it is necessary, but do not let it become a habit, Damian.”  She stacked the plates neatly with Damian’s barely-touched meal on top.  “You cannot be everywhere—do everything—at once.  I will help you.”

“ _Merci_ ,” he replied, soft and meaningful.

“You are welcome, Damian,” she allowed with brief, perfectly-accented English, but returned his plate.  “Eat now.  Or else.”

* * *

Tim Drake was currently (and rather comfortably) lodged under a computer desk in his inner sanctum—a small room off the flat that he shared with Beryl, only accessible through a broom closet complete with biometric scanners.

Paranoia came naturally to a former Robin.

The offer to share Beryl’s London flat was a generous one.  Tim had always liked Squire before, and they continued to work together well enough.  Beryl had caught him up with both civilian and Bat technology right away.  He taught her how to play a proper game of rooftop tag, and neither party ever commented on Squire’s official role as Tim’s babysitter.

It worked for them.

So Tim continued to pretend to attend University, Beryl pretended not to know better, and they got along rather famously right up until someone forgot to pick up the milk or returned to the flat in need of stitches.  It was not a bad Arrangement.

Batman, Inc. loomed quietly in the background, but Tim was content to let it remain there for now.  The young man had his own affairs to settle.

Talia.  Ra’s.  Damian.  Bruce.

After Bruce’s ultimatum _(You go out as my agent or not at all!)_ , the former-Robins had scattered—with only Stephanie still playing by the Batman’s rulebook.

It was a betrayal of the worst sort to Tim.  Every time that he thought he was done—done with Robin, done with Gotham and Jason, done with Dick and Damian, done with Bruce, done with the target on his chest and the entire world taking aim—there was Stephanie throwing herself into the gap that Tim left behind and holding things together until Tim returned.

In his meanest moments, Tim thought that if not for Steph, there would be nothing to return to.

Robins could be replaced.  _Tim_ could be replaced.

Stephanie didn’t have to pursue a death-wish to help people—help Tim, but the blonde didn’t believe in endings—only in picking herself back up, dusting herself off, and trying again.  And again.  And again.

Steph had no sense of self-preservation, and Tim still loved her enough to hate her for it.

_Tim loses … Tim always loses._

Except the games … Tim had always been very good at playing games.  He lied to Batman, outmaneuvered Dick Grayson, and tricked Ra’s al Ghul.

Nothing personal, Tim Drake did these things because he could.

 _This_ was a very personal game.

Tim was going to bring down the League of Assassins and Leviathan so that whoever the survivor of the Father-Daughter grudge match was, he or she would have to start over from the beginning.  Tim was going to create options outside of Batman, Inc. for his siblings.  Tim was going to get Damian back.

Revenge might not give him back those two years or the lives that had been extinguished under his hands … but revenge could shape the future.  Tim was all about shaping the future.

And sometimes ignoring the rest of the world in the process.

“Alright, Tim!  You’ve been in there all day, the food is out here, and I know you didn’t actually eat breakfast at that swanky restaurant,” his housemate announced, pounding emphatically on the door.  “Time to rejoin the muggles!”

Beryl hadn’t commented on the latest in Tim’s unauthorized activities, but let him skip more than one meal, and the redhead was swiftly on his case.

Tim rolled his eyes, and reached up awkwardly for the manual override to the door.

His roommate cast herself into Tim’s expensive desk chair, and settled above him to inspect his open projects.  It was part of their unspoken deal.  If Tim left something out, it was fair game for Batman, Inc.  The more private files were under much tighter security that Beryl politely respected.

The Robin line was entirely off-limits, and Beryl didn’t even glance at it as the cell chirped softly with yet another message.  Tim fiddled with wires and plating instead of answering it, and they worked in companionable silence for a little while.

Tim was just delaying the inevitable really.

* * *

“This will never work,” Sasha scoffed.

“Quiet, princess, the grown-ups are talking,” Jason flapped his hand dismissively.  “Go set up the explosives.  Be creative.  Little Red signed off on everything.”

Sasha eyed him speculatively.  “Do you really expect that excuse to work on Batman?”

“No, but the brief moment of apoplexy while he tries to process it should give me a decent head-start,” Jason shrugged.  “Take Abuse and Tiny Terror with you.”

“I heard that,” said-vigilante hissed from above.

“Then you better get going,” Jason called back, before sharing a lazy smile with Selina.  “Kids.”

“I do believe Scarlet intends to take over your share of the business,” she acknowledged bemusedly, deflecting the miniature flash bomb that Jason’s lieutenant sent their way.

“Dang, I hope so,” Jason agreed, giving the next generation a saucy wave as they disappeared from view.  “I’m getting way too old for this.”

“Watch it, kitten,” the cat-burglar warned, with a teasing flick of the wrist.

“You’re as lovely as ever,” Jason pledged gallantly, keeping an eye on the whip.  “Thanks for coming over on such short notice.”

“You did promise me sparkly things,” Selina purred.

Jason grinned.  “Sparkly things are on the agenda today,” he agreed, “along with a healthy dose of fire and a side of Bat.”

“You do throw the best parties, Mr. Hood,” Selina admitted, swinging up onto a convenient catwalk for a better view of the horizon and eventual explosions.

“I try,” Jason acknowledged graciously.  “I try.”

* * *

Quiet companionship never seemed to last in any household sporting a vigilante or two.

“Something’s up with the motorway,” Beryl announced suddenly, tapping emphatically at the screen above.

“It’s the work of satanic forces,” Tim returned promptly, as he pushed the third tower back into place, and replaced the panel.  His housemate kicked him affectionately, and rode the wheeled office chair back across the narrow floor space.

“Besides that, you git,” Beryl launched herself up from the seat and out of Tim’s hideaway in a single move, arguing as she went.  “I’ve got to go … You better get out of there and eat something, Tim, or so help me, I will rat you out to Cyril and Alfred both,” the redhead threatened over her shoulder as her bedroom door slammed behind her.

She’d likely let herself out the window once changed, and Tim briefly considered staying put.

“I will cut you off, love, I swear I will,” Beryl ducked back into the room, struggling with a boot and giving his ankle a hearty tug with her free hand.  “Power down, have a bite to eat, take a nap, and try to behave yourself.”  She jammed her hat upon her head, and scowled at the console that fortunately obscured him from view.  “I’ll know if you don’t,” she warned.  “Do not make me shut you down, Red.”

She could do it from anywhere in the city too.

Tim gave the screwdriver a final twist and crawled out from under his desk with clear ill-will to accompany his bad grace.  Unfortunately, Tim had it on multiple authorities that his scowl was not particularly off-putting.

“There’s a good lad,” Beryl announced triumphantly and took off to single-handedly save the day—er, night.

Tim sighed and made it to his feet, stretching with a few unsettling cracks of joints nowhere near old enough to justify the sounds.  He took a moment to inspect the motorway footage and considered the hostage situation.  It shouldn’t be long before Beryl returned, and she would likely stop for take-away afterwards.

He could wait for his dinner.

Tim glanced at the red phone and the waiting messages.  Then he reluctantly palmed the device and thrust it into a trouser pocket before walking into the flat proper.  He’d make a pot of tea first.

He had only just filled the kettle and settled himself on the counter with the tablet when the lights went out.  The outraged cries of their downstairs neighbors rose straight through the floors as Tim pushed carefully off the counter.

He barely brought up the tablet in time to intercept the three throwing knives aimed for vital areas.  That told him that his assailant either had night-vision eyewear or was very, very good.

No matter—Tim already had the kettle in his right hand as he tossed the ruined tablet aside.

The former vigilante slid through the doorway on his knees in a risky game of limbo, spinning immediately upon impact with the settee, and launched the contents of the kettle in the general direction of his assailant.

The water was more of an inconvenience than an attack as it hadn’t been given the time to come to a boil, but wet clothes, shoes, rugs … his assailant was no longer completely silent.

Tim could work with that.

It was something of a game between him and Beryl to see how many weapons they could stash away in their sitting room.  Tim had four bo-staves of various modifications and a handful of shuriken spread throughout the room, while Beryl kept more than a few “historical artifacts” on display.

Tim palmed a coaster from the coffee table, releasing the shuriken from its base as he stayed low, working his way back towards the larger couch and the larger weapons cache.  His eyesight was starting to adjust, but it was still the soft shift of boot-clad feet on wet carpet that gave Tim the warning needed to twist away from the assassin’s lunge and apply his elbow to the vulnerable junction of shoulder and neck.

It was hastily blocked, and the assassin actually withdrew for a split second.

Tim fumbled at the Velcro fasteners that secured his practice bo to the underside of the couch, swinging it out and to its full-length just in time to deflect the assassin’s bodyweight.  With a heave of his shoulders, Tim sent the other man flying into the low table.

It was an ugly table.  Beryl should thank him.

The assassin flipped out of the wreckage easily, and his shadowy form took a stance that Tim recognized all too well.

His wooden bo against dual swords would not end well.  Tim skirted the edge of the room, keeping an over-stuffed chair between him and his opponent as he aimed for Beryl’s much beloved armory.

The man appeared to be tracking him by sound, completely still until the assassin suddenly whipped a blade through the air in Tim’s direction.

Tim narrowly dodged as the weapon embedded itself in the wall; he hadn’t expected the move.  Throwing swords could be done, but it wasn’t an average assassin’s trick.  It took a great deal of practice to balance speed and precision with a larger blade.

Tim warily grasped the handle, pulling it free and testing the weight.  It was a better match for Tim than Beryl’s broadsword or the fencing foils on display, which seemed reasonable given that his assailant was roughly Tim’s height, if a little sturdier.  Tim resigned himself to replacing half the sitting room furniture and mirrored the shadowy figure’s stance.

This was a very bad idea.

As if in agreement, the lights came back amid the cheers of the downstairs neighbors and both parties were briefly blinded by the abrupt change of environment.

Tim stayed out of reach until his rapid blinking brought the world back into focus, a move that the assassin either respected or needed to duplicate.  The pair stood on opposite ends of the room as they got their first good look at each other, swords forgotten.

Tim stared in shock at the teenager sent to kill him.

_“Damian?”_


	4. Chapter 4

_"I lived a lie.  You knew the truth."_

\- Angtoria; [**"A Child that Walks the Path of a Man"**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHE8lV0MgZM)

The brief moment of shock should have cost Tim dearly.  It _would have_ cost him everything if not for Damian’s equally dumbfounded state.  The pair of them just stood there staring at each other for a good minute with the fight forgotten.

The assassin recovered first by spinning and diving head-first from the window.

Tim immediately pursued, abandoning weapon for window ledge.  Beryl had chosen their home for the convenient architecture rather than for its aesthetic value.

The rent was reasonable.  The response time was excellent.

And Tim was extremely grateful for the latter.

“Damian!” he shouted after the fleeing figure; all masked etiquette had disappeared from his brain when the younger man dropped from view.  Manners in general eluded Tim at the moment, and he could have sputtered all kinds of filthy profanities as Damian took the chase to street level, but Tim saved his breath for the running.

It didn’t do him any good.

Gotham may have been a demented multi-level playing field, but it was home to the city’s pretty birds and Tim knew every inch of his home.

The twists and turns of London were like a good joke that her people liked to play on outsiders.  Even after two years on Squire’s heels, Tim could not account for every passage that doubled back upon itself.

He lost Damian within a kilometer.

“Damn it, Damian,” Tim whispered, clenching his hands into fists and forcibly relaxing them.

He didn’t have his mobile with him, and he had dismantled his Batman, Inc. communicator in a fit of pique last month (and Beryl’s back-up communicator for good measure).

Even if he called it in, Damian would be gone long before even Knight or Squire arrived.

Tim did have the Robin-line on him, and his ignored messages were still blinking steadily as their probable import crushed Tim anew.  He didn’t bother with the messages—just called his brother back and dug the fingers of his free hand through his hair in aggravation as he waited for the former acrobat to answer.

He needed a haircut, but that train of thought was lost as Dick picked up.

“He isn’t in Egypt,” Tim choked out before the man could get a word in.  “He’s here … in London.  Ra’s sent him to kill me, and now I’ve lost him.”

_“Damian went after you?!”_

“Ra’s _sent_ him after me!” Tim repeated—half-whisper, half shout.  He almost slammed his fist into the wall for emphasis, but thought better of it before actually making contact with the bricks.  He didn’t have time to deal with a broken hand, so Tim took a deep breath and began to climb.

It was easier to reorient himself from the rooftops, and it had nothing to do with the futile hope of catching sight of Damian again.

“Ra’s was pulling the strings,” he continued.  “I don’t … I don’t think he knew the target ahead of time.  He wasn’t prepared.  You should have seen his face.”

_“You can’t be sure of that, Timmy.”_

It was small and guilty in the way that all of Dick’s admissions of doubt were.

“I’m still _alive_ ,” Tim hissed.  “I froze up in the middle of a fight, and he didn’t take advantage—no, he froze _too_.”

That bothered Tim more than it should.

If Damian had intended to kill him, Tim wouldn’t have survived.  If Damian had been surprised by his identity, he would have been angry … not sickened.  They should have kept _fighting_ ; they were _always_ fighting before.  Damian may or may not have obeyed his Grandfather’s wishes in the end, but they should have kept _going_.

Damian shouldn’t have fled.

“He stopped,” Tim murmured softly.  “He stopped.  He stopped.  He stopped.”

 _“Tim?”_ Dick interrupted gently.

“He stopped,” Tim repeated, hauling himself onto the roof properly.

 _“Isn’t that a good thing?”_ Dick asked.

“He stopped, and then he ran the other way,” Tim clarified.  “He didn’t run from Black Bat.  He avoided her, delayed her, but he didn’t run.  He finished the mission.  _Why did he run from me?”_

 _“… because you were the mission?”_ Dick supplied after a long moment.

Tim gnawed on his bottom lip as he considered it.

Dick filled the silence; the original Robin was good at that.  _“Ra’s hasn’t directly interfered with Batman, Inc. since taking Damian from Talia.  This was a pretty bold first move, and if Damian was kept in the dark …”_

 _“… the kid would be pretty pissed about being aimed at the very people he’s trying to avoid,”_ Steph concluded, and Tim hadn’t even heard her enter the conversation.  They must have put him on speakerphone again.  Tim would be pissed about that later.  _“Damian really doesn’t want anything to do with us right now.”_

“If he was mad, he didn’t take it out on me,” Tim pointed out, wishing that he hadn’t gotten quite so far from the security of his apartment.  He had already mentioned Ra’s and Black Bat—well, in for a penny, in for a pound.  “And the little demon has no _right_ to be mad at us; we haven’t even laid eyes on him in over a year.”

 _“Not for lack of trying,”_ Dick muttered.

“We haven’t seen him; he hasn’t seen us …” Tim trailed off and almost _toppled off_ the roof as everything clicked into place.

Damian had left them all to die.  He had deliberately walked out on them despite being convinced that they were all on borrowed time.  They had thought the shame of it was keeping Damian away.  They thought he was afraid to come home … afraid to face them after such a betrayal.

But what if that wasn’t it at all?  What if Ra’s had never set the record straight?

What if Damian thought they had actually died?

Without evidence otherwise, Damian would still be under the impression that he had killed them all.  He honestly believed that he had nowhere else to turn, but _Ra’s_ … and in true Bat-fashion, Damian was punishing himself for his perceived crimes.

It was ludicrous.  It was insane.  It was absolutely elegant in its simplicity.

“You need to come back,” Tim ordered breathlessly.  “Forget the safe-house.  Forget Ra’s and Talia.  Come back now.”

Dick sighed heavily.  _“He won’t stay there, Timmy.”_

“He can’t go back to Egypt either; Talia’s there,” Tim shot back … and that was so stupid on Tim’s part.  To sabotage the one safe harbor his brother had left …

He swallowed hard.  “I know why he’s running.”  He doesn’t share.  Not yet.  “I just don’t know where he’ll run _to_.  Gotham’s out even if he still trusted someone like O, because hello, _Batman_.  And I fucked things up with Ra’s.  Damian has nowhere left to hide.”

 _“Benjamin,”_ Steph put in.  _“He’d go to Benjamin, so where’s the kid stashed?  He’s not in Cairo, and Damian wouldn’t leave him in Alexandria if he knows about Talia.”_

 _“He’s never taken Benjamin on a mission for the League before,”_ Dick protested.

“He’s cornered,” Tim admitted, still beating himself up for the oversight.  “I’m pretty sure the normal rules don’t apply anymore.”

* * *

 

Damian had lost his pursuer without much effort.  He could be certain of this, because Damian had doubled back in order to watch from a safe distance.  The man had already given up, and Damian waited until the hero returned to the questionable safety of his compromised home … after pausing for a lengthy conversation on some kind of mobile device.

Honestly, it was as if the target was begging for a second attempt on his life.

Damian did not oblige, but only because he had lost both the advantage of surprise and the comfort of anonymity—his and the victim’s.

Drake had been the last person that Damian could have expected to see when the lights returned prematurely.  No, Damian took the careless thought back.  Grandfather or the Batman would have been much more unlikely targets.

Even in death, Damian’s predecessor continued to be a source of never-ending frustration.

Damian’s hands were shaking.  The teenager eyed them with disgust, squeezing the offending digits into fists and forcibly relaxing them again.

This reaction was beneath the Son of the Demon.

It was the matter-of-fact arrogance of his youth that stilled the tremors.  Damian wrapped that familiar sense of superiority around him like a cloak.

So it was the Son of the Demon who picked himself up off the filthy ground.  It was the Son of the Demon who carded a hand carelessly through his damp hair, and it was the Son of the Demon who walked the streets, who got him back to their lodgings and inside without disturbing a soul.

It was Damian that buried his face in Benjamin’s hair, pressing close enough to sense the rise and fall of each breath.

Benjamin stirred, but did not wake.  The boy always slept too deeply, and Damian would break him of this habit someday.

 _Not now.  Not tonight,_ he decided as he stroked his younger brother’s hair and pressed his lips to the boy’s brow.

Grayson had done this for him.  Once.

Early on in his tenure as Robin, Damian had woken up to find his mentor hovering over him.  He reacted exactly as he had been taught by a childhood among assassins.  The fight had been brief.  The outcome simple:

Damian had refused to apologize for the broken nose, and Grayson had refused to share the details of whatever mission drove him to _Damian_ of all people for comfort.

Damian didn’t understand then.  He understood now.

The Son of the Demon finally forced himself away.  He was not his mentor, and time was not on Damian’s side.  He would need to re-outfit himself before the next crisis occurred, but Damian found his movements hindered by Lia’s grip on his sleeve.

The woman must have followed Damian in from the other room.  This lack of attention to his surroundings was nigh-suicidal; his mother would be appalled.

“Dami,” Lia hissed, pulling him closer.  She smoothed his hair with one hand even as she tightened the other’s grasp.  “Dami, what has happened?  Tell me what hurt you.”

She sounded almost as fierce as Batman, and Damian smothered the hysterical thought before it could tumble out his mouth.

“Dami, I shall upend the water glass over you,” Lia warned as he pulled away.

“I am already wet,” Damian pointed out with astonishing calm.  He shed her hold on him by discarding the shirt entirely and stripped the undershirt over his head.

Lia refused to back down.  “I have seen worse,” she sniffed, reaching out as if to stroke his cheek before thinking better of it.  “And I have seen better,” she offered quietly, stepping back instead and leaning against the footboard of Damian’s bed.  “Dami, you are shaking.”

He was, the young assassin observed in disgust all over again.  Damian yanked dry trousers on, and reached for the clean shirt hanging over the chair.  He didn’t bother with half the buttons—too hurried to have time for unsteady hands and buttonholes.

He scooped up the bundle of blankets and child automatically, and that … that was the moment when Damian stopped.  He just stood there for who knew how many costly seconds.

Benjamin’s face was turned into his neck and the scent of hotel shampoo filled Damian’s nose as his mind tried to process the next logical step.  It was impeded by a series of simple truths.

Benjamin was in danger.  Things were not as they seemed.  They had come to London on the word of Ra’s al Ghul, and their grandfather had _lied_.

Damian couldn’t decide what the lie had been exactly, but it was a lie of omission and such things were more terrible than mistruths told to his face.

“Dami, you are shaking,” Lia repeated.  She sounded almost angry as she reached out to take Benjamin from him, and Damian blocked the attempt automatically, clutching Benjamin even closer.

He was not fool enough to think that his little brother continued to sleep through this undisturbed.  The breaths against his neck were perfectly even, but Benjamin was stiff in his arms.  Even the five year old knew that Damian had already carried him into what could be a trap of monstrous proportions.

“Dami, look at me!”  Lia caught his chin in both hands, and forced eye-contact.  The room was dim; the only light came from the doorway to the next room, but it was enough for the woman.  She swore softly at whatever she found in his face.  “Take Benjamin into the bathroom,” she ordered. “Lock the door, and wait for me.”

Damian recoiled: “I am not a child, Lia!”

“You are a child!” Lia snapped, refusing to release him.  “Now do as I say or tell me what is the matter, but if you continue on like this, I shall slap you!”

Damian stared.

He was behaving like a child, and it was not _Lia’s_ job to protect him.  It was _his_ duty to protect her and Benjamin.

His thoughts were scattered like marbles—no, like a house of playing cards with no foundation.  Damian seized one at random to offer the irate woman, because he suspected Lia would follow through with her threat if provoked, and Damian had no other available defense.

“He wore my brother’s face.”

Benjamin was no longer even pretending.  His breath hitched, and the stranglehold around Damian’s neck intensified.

Damian tightened his grip in return as Lia floundered for words of her own.  Her gaze flitted to Benjamin, and Damian forced the correction out.  “No.  My real—”  That wasn’t right either.  “My other brother.  Brothers.”

“Other brothers?” Lia questioned.

Damian didn’t know how to explain, but fortunately, he didn’t have to.  Benjamin twisted suddenly and savagely in his arms.  Damian didn’t dare turn him loose.  He curled around the incensed little boy instead as Damian sank into a crouch that would allow him to keep ahold of his brother without harming him.

Lia followed his lead, running her hands over Benjamin’s face as she murmured reassuring nonsense.

Damian had no words to soothe Benjamin and hung on tightly instead, choking out the rest of the painful admission.  “I saw a dead man tonight, and I could no more spill his blood than I could Benjamin’s.”

He should have.  He should have killed the imposter without a second thought.  He should have made a mark that would never be forgotten.  He should have left nothing for either the Demon’s Head or the Batman to recover.  He should have done any number of things, but Damian _couldn’t_ … not even to Drake’s look-alike.  Not after what Damian had already done.

Benjamin eventually stilled in Damian’s arms.

“Dami, is it safe?” Lia persisted softly, one hand light on Damian’s damaged shoulder and the other curled protectively around the curve of Benjamin’s head.

“I don’t know,” Damian admitted.

* * *

 

Bruce considered the silent alarms that had been tripped in London.  Tim’s agitation was obvious in the outside surveillance that Bruce had access to, but his adopted son returned shortly … and empty-handed.  Bruce watched, but Tim did not leave the flat again.

Bruce turned to the precious few seconds of the escaping intruder.  No camera had caught the assassin’s entrance, but the Batman would have been hard-pressed to miss his exit.

“I need to go to London, Alfred.”

“By the time you reach London, Sir, the young Master Damian will have most certainly left,” the butler returned promptly from where he was repairing the Bat-suit.  “But do go and explain to Master Timothy your definition of respecting his privacy.”

Bruce stared at the computer screen and the body frozen mid-fall.  “If he’s gone to see Tim, he’ll want to see Dick.  Stephanie.”

Alfred did not deign to respond.

While they had salvaged their bond as father and son, the stress of the last few years had reduced the butler’s patience regarding Bruce’s fumbling efforts with the former Robins.

With no solution of his own to offer, Alfred curbed his tongue rather than let a bitter word escape.

Unfortunately, the effect of his silence was not unlike the effect of his sarcasm.

Bruce scowled as he shifted the ice pack against his jaw.  Jason still preferred to make his point with a well-placed combat boot.

All of his children were more like Bruce than was entirely good for them.

He sank a little deeper in his chair and stared at the frame of his fifteen year old son so close and yet so far out of his reach.  He felt the butler approach, and the man’s hand—strong and frail at the same time—clasp his shoulder as they both studied the hooded blur.

“I can’t earn forgiveness from empty lockers, Alfred,” Bruce murmured after some time had passed.  “They have to come home sometime.”

“And I long for the day, Master Bruce.”

* * *

 

“I will need to speak with my grandfather,” Damian decided, continuing to distribute weapons about his person.  Benjamin watched warily from the bed with Damian’s sheathed sword in one hand and his teddy bear in the other.  “You two should go on ahead.  Pick a tourist site.  I’ll find you.”

“No,” Benjamin argued, brandishing the stuffed animal at Damian for emphasis while hugging the weapon for security.  “You promised to take me to the British Museum, Damian.”

“I thought you didn’t even want to see the British Museum,” Damian muttered, as he checked his back-up firearm.  Lia’s weapons were already loaded and concealed under a tasteful coat; Damian would feel better if she had easier access to the range weapons, but there were civilian officers to consider.

“Well, now I do,” Benjamin announced shrilly.  “You can’t die without keeping your promise.”

“No one’s going to die,” Lia countered, dropping a kiss on the boy’s forehead as she tugged the sword from his grasp.

“You don’t know that,” Benjamin shot back.  “People die all the time—especially the people that Grandfather wants dead.”

Damian winced, dropping across the bed next to his younger brother.  “I never said that Grandfather wanted me dead.”

“You implied it,” Benjamin insisted stiffly.  “I am not a baby.”

“Of course not,” Damian agreed.  “That’s why I’m sending you to protect Lia.”

“Or we could both stay here and protect you,” Benjamin demanded.  “You can’t fight the League all alone, Brother.  _You_ are _emotionally_ _compromised_.”

Damian scowled.  “ _You_ are _five years old_.  I win.”

“Boys,” Lia murmured in warning.

Damian reluctantly turned back to his younger brother who was still radiating defiance as only the very small could.  “Do you remember what I told you would happen if I died, Benja—?”

“I don’t want a djinni for a brother!” Benjamin shrieked.

Damian blinked.

Benjamin ducked his head as if capable of hiding behind the teddy bear.  “You have many brothers, Damian.  I have only one.”  The younger boy would not meet Damian’s eyes, but his voice was firm.  “I will not leave you behind.”

Damian sighed, resting his hands lightly on the younger boy’s shoulders as he leaned forward to rest his forehead against Benjamin’s.  “Well said, habibi.”

Benjamin was only permitted a moment of pride before slumping under the nerve strike Damian administered.  The teenager stood, carefully arranging the child’s body in his arms before passing his precious burden to Lia.

“We won’t go far,” she promised softly.

“I’ll find you,” he vowed in return.

“Men,” Lia murmured in disgust.  “You assume too much—perhaps we will find you instead.”  She picked up one of his knives in her spare hand, twirling it twice to amuse him.

No one stayed helpless in the company of Demons.

Lia tossed him the blade.  “Be quick, Dami.”

“Just try to keep up,” he returned in jest, opening the door and smoothly slitting the throat of the man just outside.

There was always one advance scout to Grandfather’s interrogation forces—it was usually someone overly dramatic.  Somehow, the offender always seemed stunned to die before having been allowed to monologue properly.

Damian assumed that he was doing the Demon’s Head a favor in weeding out such imbeciles.

He let the body crumple at his feet, and gestured for Lia to move ahead.

She didn’t waste time facing the first ninja to step out of the shadows—just ducked the strike and kept moving.  Damian put a knife in the back of the ninja’s head from where he stood.

He didn’t watch as Lia disappeared into the shadows.  His grandfather could not steal knowledge that Damian didn’t have, so he kept his eyes on the fight and picked off the only two assassins close enough to possibly have seen Lia’s chosen escape route.

Lia and Benjamin would disappear while Damian performed like a toy monkey for his grandfather’s followers.  If nothing else, he could at least provide them with a favorable lead.

He was good for that much at least.

Damian hated being pinned down to a confined area when the odds were unfavorable; he headed for the sweeping balconies of the atrium in the hopes of drawing the fight into the open.

Damian tried not to allow himself the luxury of thought as he encountered better (faster) underlings.  He did not speak.  He did not count.  He sliced and gutted, breaking bones and bodies.  The Son of the Demon didn’t fight large-scale, multi-opponent battles like this, but Robin did not kill.

Damian found himself in the delicate combination of lethal measures and combat triage.

The ninja followed him like ducklings … no, lemmings.

Damian felt the first wry twist of amusement as he leapt onto the balcony railing.  The action drew further attention, and one bold assailant leapt forward with the obvious intent to disturb Damian’s footing with his katana.

“Tt,” Damian sneered … _as if he had not been trained by the last of the Flying Graysons._

He skipped nimbly over the weapon, turning with the grace of a dancer.  Damian crouched with perfect poise, and made a crude beckoning gesture.

The spring upward was automatic, and two opponents were foolish enough to let their momentum carry them over the edge.  Damian landed solidly on the railing once more and grinned savagely at the crowd, pin-wheeling his arms wildly for effect rather than balance.

_Look at me, watch me, eyes on me … I don’t—didn’t—wear the colours of a traffic light for nothing._

Robin gave them all magic according to Todd, but what was magic really?  Nothing but science, illusion, and the absence of knowledge prettily presented.  A neat trick.

Damian could even see some of the older men and women starting to work it out.  The realization dawning was outlined by the tension in their bodies and the wary glances back the way they had come.

Only one thing left to do:

_Pledge.  Turn.  Prestige._

Damian let himself tip backwards over the edge.

Backflip, catch, tuck, roll … the balcony below them let out onto the hotel’s grand staircase, and Damian barely refrained from sliding down the bannister on the assailant that he was fortunate enough to land upon.  He kicked the man aside and took the bannister rail at a run.  Someone howled in frustration, and Damian barely bit back a pun regarding the full moon.

He had kept terrible company while in Gotham, and his odd bursts of humour were not appreciated by the common ninja.  Or by his grandfather.

Damian played the role, and the League had grown spoiled by the Son of the Demon.  They had forgotten Damian’s training in the city of the Bat.

Reaching the end of the bannister, Damian extracted the grapple gun from his belt and used the chandelier as an anchor.  Damian wasn’t stupid enough to turn his back entirely on the Batman’s methods—the grapple was a particularly useful tool.  He executed a perfect triple somersault and landed solidly.

He hadn’t fought like this in years.  It felt good.  It felt like Gotham.

Only there was no one here in this strange city to watch a former Robin’s back.

He lashed out with a kick only a split second too late.  A hand blocked the blow, and bony fingers wrapped around his ankle with enough force to bruise.  Meta-abilities.  Damian slapped his hands against the floor intending to plant both feet against his opponent’s chest, but the hand around his ankle yanked him backwards, altering Damian’s trajectory.

Damian heard the sharp crack of his skull against the hardwood floor, and then there was nothing.

* * *

 

Jason let a few more creative curses loose before hanging up on Dick.

He missed his adoptive mother’s old rotary phone.  Slamming the earpiece down on the hook had been much more satisfying than the end call option on modern touchscreens.

He took his cigarettes out to the fire escape.  Someone else had beaten him there, but Jason took the opposite end and chain-smoked his way through the rest of his pack.

Idiots.  They were all earnestly miserable, utterly repressed, yet hopeful _idiots_.

Plans within plans.

Secrets.

Staged stories that fell to pieces because no one knew their _parts_ let alone the damn lines.

The Bats were as bad as Talia in that regard.  Not a lick of common sense could survive a childhood in the Bat Cave, and not a single person on the side of light and puppies was capable of making a straight-forward move.

Not even Jason, he reflected mournfully, flicking a bit of ash away.  He had kept his crooked nose out of it and let better people fuck it up in their own way.

They would die for each other, and Jason liked to think they had that lesson straight now.  He liked to think they had learned _something_ from this insanity even if it was only that they belonged … that they would be missed.  The Bats would die for each other.

Damian was only half a Bat.  He would die for them, but he would _kill_ for them too.

Jason loved his littlest brother for it, but he’d never actually gone through with returning the favor.  He couldn’t put a bullet in Talia.  He couldn’t find Ra’s even if he stood a chance against the Demon’s Head.  And he had never bothered to look for Damian … despite the sick certainty that putting a bullet in the kid would be the only way of pinning a former Robin down.

No, Jason had stayed in Gotham for a year-long pity party and watched them all flounder.

He was supposed to be _better_ than this.

Damn it, he had gotten Sasha back!

There hadn’t been a billboard large enough to suit his purposes, so Jason had painted his simple apology in six foot tall letters across windows all the way down Jefferson Street in the business district.

And then on a handful of buildings down in the Narrows—he had even paid a couple of local graffiti artists to make it look extra nice.

Jason had painted it on the roof of the police station himself (to Commissioner Gordon’s annoyance), and when all else failed, he marched up and printed his message on the side of Arkham Asylum.

Sasha had appeared the next night with her duffle and dependents.

 _“You are a jackass,”_ she had agreed happily.  _“I want new flash grenades and the master bedroom.”_

What Sasha wanted, Sasha got.  Jason would break heads for her, and Sasha knew it.  Making amends had been _easy_.

This wasn’t easy … for any of them.

“Can I bum one?” Colin murmured, crossing the invisible line of the fire escape.  He settled next to Jason, dangling his scrawny legs through the bars.

“Nope,” Jason snorted, extinguishing the last one in his make-shift ashtray.  “Abuse already looks like Bullock from behind.  No need to smell like him too.”

“Hypocrite.”

“Shrimp,” Jason returned.

Colin sighed and pressed his face against the cool metal bars.  “I’ll grow.  Someday.”

“With your serious and probably fatal vegetable allergy?” Jason teased, as something in his chest started to unwind.  “Don’t get your hopes up, kid.”

He couldn’t reach Damian, but Colin was fixable.  Jason was _good_ at fixing things.

They sat quietly and watched what passed for a sunrise in Gotham—light-coloured smog in a rainbow of manmade shades and a pinprick of sunlight too bright to gaze eastward.

“Why do you stick around, kid?” Jason finally asked as people began poking about below.  “B could put you up anywhere.  He owes you that much.”

Colin shrugged: “I don’t want anything from him.”

Apathy is a lousy look on a kid as sensitive as Colin Wilkes.  Jason seized a handful of the teenager’s hoodie and reeled him in for a bear hug.

“Then don’t take anything from him,” Jason said simply, muffling any response of Colin’s against his chest … because he knew what it was like to be considered a charity case.  He knew what it was like to prove yourself and have a hero fall short.  “Take it from me.  Take it from the other Robins.  Take it from Damian, because he’d want you to, Red.  You want out, and we will get you out.  _I_ will get you out.”

“But Damian’s coming home,” Colin whispered into Jason’s jacket.  He was shaking like he did at the tail-end of a nightmare when Colin couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep or even in control of his own body.

Jason knew the feeling.  It was why he let the kid crash on his living room floor in the first place.

“Yeah,” Jason exhaled slowly.  “Yeah, he is.  Even if I have to go get him myself … but you don’t have to be at Ground Zero when it happens, kid.  You’ve done enough.  You’ve done more than enough.”

The things that this kid had been through, Colin had every right to run like hell.

Running was always a valid option.  It didn’t solve much, but it was an option.

“You _have_ options,” he murmured, staring out over the cramped buildings and narrow alleys.  “You want to give your foster parents another try?  Oracle will put you back in the system and make a whole shit-ton of paperwork disappear.  You want real parents?  Superman and his wife are looking to adopt again or there’s this gorgeous alien princess that ‘Wing used to date.  She wouldn’t bat an eye at making you heir to an entire planet.  You want to disappear?  No one will ever find you.  I won’t _let_ them find you.”

Jason might have lost track of which teenager he was talking to, but Colin was nodding along and Jason refocused.

“You don’t have to see this through.  Fuck, kid, don’t let this mess swallow you whole.  Don’t drown.  Don’t …”

Colin wasn’t shaking anymore.  He did that sometimes.  Out of the blue, Colin would turn prickly, stiffen up, and start tossing around big words that reminded them all how this kid—this orphan with no one and nothing to his name—was considered an equal by Damian Wayne.  Left unchecked, Colin’s fighting style changed.  His Gotham accent disappeared.  And the teen could turn worryingly reckless _fast_.

It had taken a few months, but Jason finally figured out that Colin was pretending to be Damian when things got bad.  It wasn’t exactly the epitome of mental health, but Nell had confided that Colin could ward off panic attacks and venom-related incidents by putting himself in someone else’s headspace.  Sasha said that it made Colin feel better (“Stronger”), and Jason left it alone.

Jason still had his moments where he pretended to be Bruce or Dick.  He could let Colin have this.

“He didn’t know.”  It was supposed to be a statement.  Damian would have made it a statement, but Colin’s imitation wasn’t _that_ good, and it was a question instead.

It was a question that Jason had already answered a hundred times, and he would answer it a hundred more.

“Kid, the things Damian Wayne doesn’t know could fill a book.”

“Then someone has to tell him,” Colin said simply.

“Working on it,” Jason muttered, resting his chin on the top of the younger vigilante’s head.  It had been a long night.  “Just can’t find a billboard big enough to get the message across.”

* * *

 

Damian woke where he had fallen … more-or-less.  The hotel lobby was spotless, with daylight streaming in every oversized picture window.  All signs of last night’s carnage—the blood, the weapons, the bodies—had been cleared away.

Regrettably, the guests and any innocent members of the hotel staff were also absent.

Damian cautiously moved to hands and knees, testing each joint as he went to make certain it would support weight.  He wasn’t entirely sure that his skull wouldn’t split the moment he became vertical and empty his abused brain matter onto the perfectly polished floor.

He resisted the temptation to cradle his cranium in both hands.  Damian refused to crawl, and he would need all of his limbs to steady himself on the stairs.

Concussions were terribly inconvenient injuries.

He made it to his feet and blinked away the double vision.  The lobby remained beautiful and abandoned.  There was no sign of his grandfather’s men, but thankfully, there was no sign of Benjamin and Lia’s capture either.  Damian also appeared to be undamaged for the most part.

There was some security in the knowledge that Ra’s al Ghul didn’t want him dead _yet_.

Damian made careful, steady, and exact movements until he could grasp the stair railing.  He regretted his choice in rooms on the fourth floor long before he made it to the second, but Damian was his father’s son.  He continued onward.

When he finally reached the rooms that he had paid for, Damian was not surprised to find them ransacked.  He did not waste time searching for evidence or weaponry.  A computer had been left open on the bedside table—a direct line to the Demon’s Head.

One did not keep Ra’s al Ghul waiting.

“Good morning, Grandson.”

“Good morning, Grandfather.”  Damian let himself sink to the floor cross-legged and reached up to tilt the screen appropriately.  Ra’s position was likewise meditative.

“Your mission?” Ra’s inquired politely, as if he had not sent a small army to investigate matters.  Undoubtedly, his grandfather was perfectly aware of the target’s status, and was poised to reclaim his grandsons the moment Damian failed this mysterious test.

 _I haven’t failed yet_ , Damian reminded himself.  Aloud: “In progress.  Your guest?”

Damian could hear machine gun fire in the background, despite the untouched calm of his grandfather’s private quarters.

“I have not been so besieged in almost four hundred years,” the immortal chuckled.  “It is a pleasant enough diversion … although I miss our little talks, Damian.  Our little games of strategy.”

Damian hummed a noncommittal agreement.

He resolved that if they all lived through this, he would purchase an appropriately expensive game console and introduce the Demon’s Head to modern video games.  Somewhere out there, Damian was certain an appropriately difficult one existed—one capable of entertaining even Ra’s al Ghul.  He would find it; Damian was thoroughly sick of their never-ending chess game.

“How is your brother?”

 _Alive_ , Damian wanted to say.  _We were never brothers,_ he should snap.  _Replaced_ , he knew.

Instead, he gave a helpless little shrug and answered the question that Ra’s intended.  “Benjamin has reconsidered the appeal of the British Museum,” he offered blithely.  “And Lia insists that we are both in need of a haircut.”

Ra’s hummed softly.  “I must agree with her, Grandson.”

“So says the man who has worn his hair in the same fashion since the 1800s,” Damian returned graciously.  He earned another chuckle from his grandfather, and suddenly hated the man.  Hated the man’s power and mission.  Hated the fondness with which the man regarded him.

Damian was nothing like Ra’s al Ghul.

“Why?”

The question slipped from him before Damian recognized his own intent.

_Why me?_

_Why her?_

_Why love us?_

_Why test us?_

“Why did you send me here, Grandfather?” Damian covered smoothly.  “Why this mission?  And why now?”

“Circumstance dictated,” Ra’s finally allowed after a long moment of silence.  Damian felt himself measured by the immortal’s gaze.

“I saw him,” Damian murmured.  He kept his voice soft, ducked his head in submission.  These were his mother’s tricks, but they worked for him as well.  “It was well done, Grandfather.  Congratulations.”  Damian swallowed hard.  “I hesitated.  Was that the point?”

“It was not.”  Ra’s sounded very old and very tired now.  “Tell me, grandson, why did you hesitate?”

“The clone was a remarkable copy.  Almost as easy to manipulate as the original,” Damian baited gently, knowing that for Ra’s al Ghul, it was impossible to gain the upper hand against Timothy Drake.

In this, Damian had bested his grandfather by virtue of having once been a bratty ten year old.

“I do not appreciate unfounded accusations, Damian.”

“Then do not lie to me.”

His grandfather sighed heavily.  Damian could almost see regret in the slow shake of his head.  “The man you saw tonight, Damian … he is not a clone.”

Damian recoiled.  It was an involuntary reaction, and he’d lost whatever ground he’d gained.  “This is a poor gambit indeed,” Damian decided abruptly as he attempted to recover what he could.  “If you are still lying—as every instinct I possess would attest—it gains you nothing.  Yet in telling me such a truth, you would have me understand … you would have me understand that you sent me here … you sent me to _kill my own brother.”_

“I sent you to kill the man who gave your mother our location,” Ra’s returned calmly.

Damian stilled.

“Benjamin is your brother, Damian, and he is safe and sound in your care,” his grandfather remonstrated gently.  Ra’s al Ghul was always gentle with the things he loved.  He was always calm.  He was—above all—reasonable.

Until one reached the very edge of his patience, and even then the Demon’s Head had a way with words.  Damian had watched the condemned go to their deaths convinced of their own guilt.

Such was the power of a self-made deity.

“Do not let yourself be fooled by the soldiers of your Father’s house; there was never any affection between you and the younger Detective.  Even now, he leads a small, dedicated team with the sole goal of apprehending you.”

The utter silence is deafening.

Ra’s gestured gracefully in a movement more regret than bewilderment.  “I have done what I can to lead him astray, Grandson, but there comes a time when a man of our position can no longer look away from the chaos a single mortal creates.”

Damian forced the words out.  He played the game.  “Like Mother?”

His grandfather reached out as if to steady Damian through the screen.  A hand on the shoulder perhaps were he close enough.  A touch to the cheek if Damian had done well.  An embrace if Ra’s suspected Damian of faltering.

Such a reward came with a knife in the back and a familiar endearment on the old man’s lips.

 _Beloved_ , Damian heard in his mother’s voice and his blood ran cold.

Ra’s nodded slowly at last:  “Like your mother, my son.”

* * *

 

Damian didn’t question the taxi that pulled up as he exited a small café with his precious caffeine.  He shifted his bag and climbed into the backseat without a word.

Benjamin was in his lap before they had even merged back into traffic, and Damian passed his drink up to Lia before it could be spilled.

“It’s alright,” Damian murmured.  “He’s not angry.”

Benjamin would not let go.  “I hate you,” he insisted against Damian’s chest, twisting the fabric of Damian’s coat possessively.

“Benji,” Lia started to censure, but Damian waved her off.

He clutched the little boy in return even as he let his aching head fall back against the seat.  “I love you,” he answered simply.  “I brought you biscuits.”

“Dami!”

The scolding held no heat, and Benjamin still refused to be parted from him.  Damian patted the child’s back gently, willing to forgo dinner in favor of curling up then and there for a nap.

“Dami,” Lia repeated insistently.

He managed to force his eyes open.

Lia was peering at them through the rearview mirror, studying his face for signs that things were not as he said.  It was different from his grandfather’s gaze.  After a long moment, Lia returned her gaze to the road.

“Where do we go?” she asked softly.

Damian had considered the question carefully while resupplying.  There was only one place in the entire world where no agent of the Bat would trespass, and it would be the last place anyone thought to search for Damian Wayne or the Son of the Demon.

He rested his head against Benjamin’s once more.

“We go to Metropolis.”

 _"This is what I thought—so think me naïve."_  
  
\- AFI; [**"Prelude 12/21"**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX4t--i53X8)


End file.
